Tax kitty up 28% in Q1

Corporation tax collections up just 4%; indirect tax kitty up 31%

While indirect tax collections jumped 30.8 per cent to Rs 1.98 lakh crore against Rs 1.53 lakh crore earlier, direct taxes yielded Rs 1.24 lakh crore (growth of 24.79 per cent), figures released by the finance ministry revealed.

However, indirect taxes saw higher growth of 36.3 per cent in the first quarter of 2015-16. If additional resource measures are taken out, the indirect tax kitty would rise by just 10.2 per cent.

GOOD SEASON

• Much of the growth in indirect tax collections was due to an increase in excise duty on petroleum and other measures
• The 28% growth in collection is significantly higher than the annual growth of 12% budgeted for gross tax collections in the current year
• The govt collected Rs 3.24 lakh crore in April-June, 2016-17 against Rs 2.52 lakh crore in the corresponding period of the previous year

The government had imposed additional excise duties on petroleum to take advantage of easing international oil prices since October 2014. It similarly took other measures in two other indirect taxes — customs duty and services tax.

The impact of additional measures could be gauged from the fact that excise duty collections were up more than 50 per cent at Rs 91,225 crore, but if additional measures are not taken into account the rise would be 13.9 per cent.

Similarly, services tax fetched Rs 53,757 crore, which represented 23.3 per cent growth, but if these measures were not considered, the growth came down to just 4.3 per cent. Customs duty yielded 15.5 per cent higher revenues at Rs 58,808 crore. But net of additional measures, the growth came to about 11.2 per cent.

In the first three months, the government collected one-fourth of the budgeted indirect tax collections for 2016-17.

In direct taxes, corporation tax yielded 4.43 per cent higher tax revenues in the first quarter of the current financial year, while personal income tax led to 48.75 per cent higher kitty. However, pre-re, funds corporation tax kitty rose 13.5 per cent, while that of personal income tax rose 29.8 per cent.

The main reason for increase in direct tax kitty was the change in the requirements for advance tax payment even in respect of individuals, made in the previous year’s Budget. Earlier, there were only three instalments of advance tax to be paid by individuals in September, December and March.

The collection up to June showed that 14.63 per cent of the annual Budget target of direct taxes has been achieved in the first three months of the current financial year.